Hawken‘s evolution from jaw-dropping, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-triple-A indie to investor-powered multimedia behemoth has been utterly fascinating. At the end of the day, though, it’s a game about robots rocking, socking, and shooting other robots. The glitz and glamour just won’t stick if the core’s a prime candidate for the scrap heap. So then, how does Hawken’s surprisingly high-speed mech warring fare? I fired up RPS’ patented Judge-O-Tron (it is maybe a washing machine with a very mean face drawn on it) and took aim at Hawken’s open beta.

I like moving. No, this isn’t a setup for the least climactic “and in the game” punchline ever. I seriously love just, like, running and jumping and flopping over on trampolines and pretty much anything that lets me scream “wheeeeeeeeeee” without looking like a complete crazy person. Because it feels wonderful. I mean, we’re built to move. Our joints creak and rust and scream if we don’t. So moving, it’s fun. And yet, games – in their relentless pursuit of that ephemeral concept – largely ignore the glorious intoxication of human physicality.

So naturally, Hawken’s solution is giant robots.

This definitely isn’t MechWarrior: But Named After A Bird For Some Reason. Hawken’s lumbering god machines move like kung-fu ballerinas. Holding any direction and shift prompts a dodge so rapid that it may as well be teleportation. But, at the same time, each massive footfall is accompanied by parts whirring and meticulously detailed cockpits wobbling atop tenuous metal legs. The end result is a mixture of lithe grace and the knowledge that – yes – you’re still inside a ground-stomping, sky-scraping goliath. One moment, I might feel utterly invincible – bullets pinging off my armored shell as I charge unflinchingly forward – while, in the next, I’ll flit and flutter about like a frightened mocking bird.

Hawken doesn’t feel quite like anything else I’ve ever played. In this case, that’s a very, very good thing. That’s not to say combat’s impenetrable right off the bat – you’re still pointing at things and clicking on them until they die, after all – but movement’s the special sauce on an otherwise rather traditional formula. It creates these wonderful moments, too, of dodging milliseconds before a rocket splatters your bot’s chewy, nougaty human center. After getting the rhythm down and doing that a few times in a row, I started to feel like Neo from the Matrix. It’s a glorious sensation, outmaneuvering and outgunning an opponent until they’re demoralized enough to whip around and flee for dear life.

The main problem with Hawken, then, is, er, everything else. Foremost, it’s extremely limited at the moment. Granted, it’s still in beta, but fair warning: four modes and a handful of maps aren’t going to hold your attention for long. Admittedly, what’s there is pretty solid – with the impressively vertical, jump-pad-laden Crion map managing an especially standout performance – but there’s just not a whole lot of it. Plus, none of the modes really present anything special outside of Hawken’s unique brand of highly mobile mechanized combat. Deathmatch and team deathmatch are par for the course, and missile assault’s just a basic point capture and hold to-do. The multi-phase Siege mode, meanwhile, spices things up slightly, but still ultimately devolves into a fairly rote routine of killing and collecting.

Unfortunately, Hawken’s issues don’t go away when matches end. In this case, free-to-play comes at a paradoxically high cost, roping off all mech classes except a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none recruit machine that looks like a walking television. (Somewhat hilariously, its codename is CR-T.) Hawken’s XP/in-game currency accumulation rate is quite slow, too, so unlocking any of the more interesting classes takes hours. In the meantime, you can always drop precious spacebucks on a slow trickle of items, weapons, and other miscellaneous upgrades, but the agonizing rate of progress certainly doesn’t befit Hawken’s race of fleet-footed colossi.

On the upside, Adhesive rotates out a couple temporarily free trial mechs, so unlocking new hardware’s not a complete slog. But even so, I eventually ended up getting impatient and dropping $10 on a couple classes that seemed particularly up my alley – which, admittedly, is hardly the end of the world as far as prices go. It does, however, make class synergy hard to come by, because most matches end up pretty recruit-heavy. Granted, Hawken’s currently limited nature also feeds into that issue. The rangy Sharpshooter, for instance, is rarely useful on the game’s selection of (relatively) small, obstacle-laden maps. As a result, most players stick to mid or close-range mechs like Assaults, Berserkers, and Bruisers.

None of that, however, holds a candle to Hawken’s current matchmaking system, which is basically broken. Seriously. It does not make matches. It breaks them. I’m not sure what arcane principles guide it to make the pairings it does, but a markedly higher-than-zero number of level 1-5 teams tossed into the deep end against level 20s forces me to suspect warlocks are involved. I once participated in a team deathmatch round that ended with a shutout score of 15 to 70. But then, against mechs with slightly better stats (hooray for skill trees) piloted by exponentially more experienced players, is it really all that surprising? Oh, and before you ask: no, there isn’t a server browser. The current lack of one is completely baffling, and I hope to the scrap-riddled heavens that it materializes before too much longer.

It’s a shame, too, because when the stars align and I end up on a level playing field, Hawken’s great fun. I suppose it speaks to the robo battler’s potential that my smoke-and-spark avalanches of thermonuclear rage were followed shortly by whispers of “…but I guess one more match couldn’t hurt.” Right now, it just needs a whole, whole lot of fine-tuning. More maps, more modes, quicker progression (the ability to share XP between mechs, maybe?), more class variety, a swarm of flying bat-spiders to rip out the entrails of its current matchmaking system in the most agonizing way imaginable, etc. As is, I still definitely recommend giving Hawken a go (it’s free, after all), but be prepared for a fair bit of frustration.

I have two big complaints about hawken:
A) It feels more like an FPS than a mech simulator (the worst criticism one can ever make of a mech game) and
B) the FTP model is badly implemented, there are far too few configuration options available off the bat, practically none almost, and TBH it doesn’t look like there is all that much depth to it even once you have unlocked everything, the few mechs are too similar and not nearly configurable enough.

The thing is: Hawken is, for me at least, just sitting between the chairs. It is not a good Mech/Robot game. It has no locational damage, the robots don’t feel particularly powerful and there is basically no strategy involved in the shooting as the heat management is minimal.
And as a straightforward shooter the pondering movement and aiming just puts me off. This coupled with the effect-laden and more often than not pretty ugly graphics which make it hard to discern enemies from the background and the other issues just make for a not very enjoyable experience.

MWO has it’s own problems (not enough content, similarly bad graphics, unbalanced F2P system) but the base gameplay, in my opinion, is just worlds better than what Hawken offers.

You could, in theory, go to flight-sim levels of anal detail over things that don’t actually exist. Maybe Steel Batallions did, but all I really know about it was that it had an awesome custom controller.

On the Steel Battalion controller, the one under the flap is the very important never want to press by accident eject button.

The eject button was a serious matter, because if you died, your save data was deleted.

From what I recall hearing, you had stuff like a start-up sequence and software reboots (when you overheated) and such to perform. Presumably nothing like a modern airplane sim, simply because it doesn’t have 200+ switches, but it wasn’t just a “press start” game either.

So when did that become a requirement for a “mech simulator?” I mean seriously, what the hell? Managing fuel and ammunition isn’t enough? What’s special about heat management specifically that makes it central to the mech sim fantasy?

I bet we could have manual foot and leg controls and some people would complain that it wasn’t a true mech sim because it didn’t have heat management!

The closest comparison I can think of is a Gundam FPS (I got one on the Wii, for example) except with no melee option. I believe even that had locational damage though. The Front Mission TPS is kinda in that vein too but again, locational damage (though with a rather silly way of handling leg damage). Armored Core skips heat and location damage but has super maneuverable mechs that can take craptons of damage.

Ehrm, ever played any Mechwarrior game? Heat management is one of the most crucial things in any mech game. It’s basically like mana. The tradeoff between Ammo based weapons (which heat up your mechs less) or laser based weapons (Which obviously heat it up more, but won’t run out of ammo) is extremely important; Once your mech overheats, it automatically shuts down and you are vurnrable for a few secs.

Not having it is like having a spellcaster game without some sort of Mana in it. Except that you can keep fighting in Mechwarior after overheated, although at the risk of turning the battlefield into the new Pripyat, with your mech as the monolith. Remove heat, and you strip the game of it’s very SOUL.

Even Mechwarrior 4, the most actiony of the mechwarrior games, had Heat management. I am quite sure that the console spinoff Mechassault had it too. It is by no means comparable to independently rotating arms.

@Joshua: Battletech has heat management, other mech series usually skip that. Most just have energy production and storage, often only for boosters and jumpjets. In Armored Core the tradeoff for energy weapons is that you have both a higher base energy consumption and a per-shot energy cost, energy weapons still use ammo as well though (AC5 has weapons that produce heat but they’re time-limited superweapons and heat mitigation merely reduces the damage you take yourself while they are active). In Gundam the beam weapons are simply restricted to mechs with reactors that can handle them and still use magazines for ammo. Hawken is clearly going more for the Japanese mech style than the Western one with the dash boosters.

Max. although Norma`s postlng is incredible… on sunday I got a gorgeous Chrysler after making $4765 this-past/five weeks and-a little over, $10 thousand this past munth. this is actually the most-comfortable job I have ever done. I actually started three months/ago and pretty much immediately got me minimum $74.. per/hr. I follow the instructions here..Millionaire Business 2013

Not only, though it is discouraging. I was prepared to throw 40$ at it in order to cover the costs for “full game” and then I didn’t do it, because I saw that it would never be enough. 250 dollars maybe…

Hey Devs, wouldn’t my 40$ be better than nothing ?

I belong to the group of players who don’t let one videogame to occupy their life, so grinding my way through superslow unlocks is out of the question. What I wanted from HAWKEn was 40 minutes of multiplayer fun daily and I was willing to pay for that but that is not enough. Hawken wants your soul.

The game itself is kinda good at the core but a great disappointment overall, exactly as mr. Grayson describes in the article.

Yeah. One of the reasons AirMech (which isn’t a first-person mech game, sorry folks) got to be a F2P-er that I actually put money to was that that money basically got me the game, as if it were boxed up. I might run short on some cosmetic stuff, but I’ve got enough boosted credit to unlock everything I want and will get the rest in reasonable time.

It’s almost like the whole Humble Bundle thing about getting lots of people to give you some money works if you can make them feel they’re getting a good deal works better than making them feel that they’re being nickle-and-dimed to death.

I think Adhesive are also forgetting that for a multiplayer game, even free players are important, because they’re chaff for the matchmaking system. If there are only the dedicated paid-loads core to play against, then new players will bounce right off, and there goes expanding your income stream.

For the record, I grabbed the Vanguard Initiative package, spent probably about half of the meteor points (including a few purchases that I haven’t really bothered with) and I have everything that I want with the game currently
So you CAN, with about 40 bucks CDN get most/all of the things you want
As well, there have been several double HC weekends and you automatically get 2 mechs as freebies (though they swap out LoL/SMNC/BLC/other-game-of-choice-style)
I have HC boosters that have gone unused because I now have something like 10k Hawken Credits and nothing to spend them on
The only trouble I find is with that first mech and item set unlock… though at least you dont have to worry so much about internals on a CR-T (because you have some pretty solid drawback-free internals)

Exactly. In fact, if this were a regular game, I would have gladly thrown $50 at this and never looked back. I already had much more fun with this than many shooters in said price range.

But I can’t shake the feeling how much more amazing this game would be if it wasn’t for the the free to play bullshit and the matchmaking. That’s one dangerous one-two combo right there. Overall I’d say you can still get in the game as a rookie, not spend a dime, and have great fun. But if it was a pay-on-retail game and had sensible matchmaking, its quite solid core would really get a chance to shine.

Overall Hawken has done for me what no game since Steel Batallion did. What I feel this article doesn’t sufficiently convey is the attention to the “feel” of the game. The way the HUD indicators flicker on and off when acquiring a target. The way cockpit sways to and fro. The lockon reticle followed by a volley of missiles that streak towards the target in the best mech fashion I have ever seen.

Yeah, this is true. The Recruit (CRT) is a very solid mech and more than capable of going on enormous rampages if you play your cards right, even though as the game ages, servers full of hapless newbies are fewer and far between. The main problem for me is that playing Recruit is BORING. You get a TOW rocket welded to your right arm and your choice from two automatic spamcannons on the left, with a third at level 25. I’m level….15 or so, and I still don’t have nearly enough Hawkenbux to buy a new mech. This is an arena shooter in the vague lineage of UT, so why am I locked down to two sets of weapons?

I do like the game, and I don’t mind dropping some cash on it, but it’ll likely be a body swap for the Berserker, or something else cosmetic, rather than just skipping ahead on the grind.

Also, if 15-70 is a shutout, you haven’t been playing enough Hawken. Luckily it’s usually not the gear gap that does it but the skill gap, and a few games is usually enough to get people attuned to how it plays. Getting them to stick together, which is of tremendous importance in a high-TTK game like this, is another matter though…

Yes. This. (OP)
“None of that, however, holds a candle to Hawken’s current matchmaking system, which is basically broken. ”
They had a server browser in beta. The only reason to remove it is to add matchmaking (which is broken!) and the only reason to force matchmaking is to pretend matchmaking works and force the players against lvl 20 mechs and “encourage” them to pay for bonuses to compete. (IMO)

That and paid for ammo/use items. Once this game added paid for items (on day of release no less, that almost caught me out as they promised not to include these all through he closed beta/development) it was dead to me.

If this was a paid for game, I’d splash £15 on it easily for a MP only game. It would have been the TF2 of Mech games. If they just had hats (cosmetics) only and no pay to win/progress. :/

Matchmaking is being patched on Jan 3rd. We’re currently battling Counter-Measures and it seems pretty clear that not even all of Adhesive likes them
We’re also trying to organize scrims and have a #HawkenScrim irc for just that, and we’re trying to work with the devs to get something a little more solid and reliable
Also I’m pretty sure they’re going to add the server browser back in eventually

It’s certainly a game I plan to get around to, but I think I’ll give it some more time in the oven before I take out this bird. Looks beautiful though, but matchmaking issues in games (feeling like you’ve lost a game before it even starts) is really an issue that’s bugging me lately…so I’ll see if they tackle it better in the future.

I played three games of hawken before I gave up
each game suffered from:
– unreadable display – bots and terrain blend into one another
– random red outlines flicker in and out of vision on the edge of the HUD’s enhancement range – then one of them snipes you
– one team was almost exclusively level 1 players, the other 10+
– the higher ranked team swept across the map and spawn camped the noobs with snipers and mortars that the noobs simply could not access
– netcode was mediocre – lag had a noticable impact even with low latencies
– movement felt utterly bizarre – leap sideways then trundle around very slowly waiting on leap cooling down &c
– there is no leap backwards – that skill is replaced by a full 180 turn – counter-intuitive and aggravating

I played a lot of hawken matches and have the following to say on your findings.

1. I myself have no problems with discernign mechs and train. It’s easy for me. Other than that, practice.
2. Sounds either like a hardware issue, or else it’s directly related to your first point and therefore requires practice.
3 to 5. point taken, needs fix.
6. Movement is one of the most awesome bits of Hawken, and you’ll need practice to get the basics down. You need to manage your resources for escapes and chases. I think it is utterly divine, and fits well in the mech universe they are trying to create.
7. The 180 Turn is, once again if practiced, much better than a leap backwards, because turning is slow in Hawken and it will kill you if you try. Just turn and afterburn the fuck away, then turn again.

I would conclude that three matches is not enough to get the optimal experience out of the game. I can understand it is frustrating to play more as of now due to the matchmaking difficulties, but don’t write this game off quite so easily.

I played a few more matches than that, but had exactly the same issues – poor matching, poor visual differentiation (I’ve a 2gb radeon, so I’m not underpowered). I gave up eventually which is a shame because it looked much better than it played.

Every developer can apply the prewritten netcode as they wish or licenced developers can write a new netcode if they wish, if you have encountered these problems it’s a developer-problem rather then an engine-problem. You’re welcome to read up on how UEs netcode works via their developers network here -> http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ReplicationHome.html I think that you will agree after further studies that it’s not a problem with the engine but how developers decide to use it if the problem is really related to netcode.

Surprising then that so many UE3 games, including Epic’s own, suffer from the exact same problems with lag and if a developer is crazy enough to use console-style player hosting instead of dedicated servers the games become basically unplayable or at least heavily distorted.

It has exactly the same problems as MWO. This type of game is just not fun when you’re solo queueing.

And the F2P is horrible, much worse than MWO’s.

I still don’t see why this game is a multiplayer shooter. What’s wrong with making an actual singleplayer game these days? Whatever happened to GAMES? Everything is just multiplayer arenas, I’m sick of it.

Because non-free-to-play-multiplayer-only games are dead with a couple of exceptions. People tend to play multiplayer games longer than single player games. More play time = more opportunities to shill for in-game purchases.

On the other hand, f2p single player games doesn’t work, so single player games are pretty much reliant on a) getting on Steam, which for an indie is by no means guaranteed, and b) getting lots of people to buy your game, usually at a Steam sale.

Is this your handle? Because it sure looked like you just flew off it.
Which is particularly funny, because the sentence you quoted is talking about the Free to Play Model, not the depth or complexity of the games.

Hawken’s basic gameplay, which this all revolves around to, is awesome bar-none. I’m having great fun playing it, and I just stopped to read this preview.

Bulletpoint time!
– The matchmaking is, indeed, dreadful. I most definetly hope they fix that before release.
– The free-to-play ‘bullshit’ isn’t as bad as it seems. You cannot pay-to-win, you can at best pay-to-get-another-robot; and even these can be unlocked by playing for a day or so. I never found it all that bad. All the other stuff you can buy for real moneyz is eyecandy.
– The recruit is quite awesome in the levels which are there now. Which is silly, cause you don’t really want to change bots unless it’s one of the slightly more focused close-to-medium ranged bots.

Anyway, this game has all the cons of being a beta, but as the core mechanics are awesome, I have little doubt this is about to be a little gem for the near future.

Yeah its an ok game but the free pay has messed it up. It would have been better if they’d have went with the pay to multiplay.

I couldnt be bothered with it, I’m not going to spend hours unlocking crap that I dont know is any good. The matches I did have were completely unbalanced and, I cant see there being much strategy/choices when your on your own.

So, it’s like Mechwarrior Online? A solid core game marred by a poorly implemented F2P model and lack of variety? The only thing missing would be the crippling balance issues and it would be exactly like MWO…

A billion times this. MWO could only keep my attention for about a week, it just damned lacking in its current form. I’d rather pay full price for a new mechwarriors game then this half backed nonsense companys seems obsessed with nowadays.

MWO’s update as of a fortnight or so ago did seriously scale back the grind, at least initially; huge bonuses for your first games, applied retroactively if you’ve already played them. Enough to get buy yourself a mech—even an assault one. And the repair/rearm cost to field it is gone.

It still has shoddy netcode and various other warts, but MWO feels like it has a lot more fixable potential; especially if they’re willing to make shake-ups like that.

Having briefly tried MWO, and having put a few hours into Hawken so far, I disagree pretty strongly.

Speaking as a veteran of Mechwarrior games, MWO felt inapproachable, and the grind looked horrifying. (How many hours before I unlocked one mech that I could actually customize?) I tried two, three matches, then gave up on it. It didn’t feel like a game I could play unless I put money into it.

Hawken, on the other hand, I’ve put zero dollars into so far, and I’ve been having a fantastic time. The gameplay is fantastic, as Nathan described – fast, kinetic, engaging. The metagame isn’t nearly as bad as MWO’s, too – you start with a mech unlocked, yours to level up, rename & customize, and it’s one of the best mechs in the game, once you get the hang of it.

There are two problems in the game right now, as I see it:

(1) The equipment grind is incredibly dumb. It’s extremely pricey, and most of it has very little use, except the EMP, which shuts you down for a full 7* seconds (!!!) if it hits you. Luckily, very few people have it unlocked, but… christ. What were the devs thinking? (They apparently buffed it recently. !!!)

(2) There is no matchmaking. The situation Nathan described, with a team of Level 1s against Level 10+? That’s because the “matchmaker” is incredibly crude: it finds an empty server, ideally a close one, and drops you in. Team balance? What’s that? The matchmaker has no idea!

(As a bonus, this tends to produce situations like the one Nathan described, since the teams most likely to have slots open are the ones that are losing.)

I mostly just play deathmatch, where that isn’t a problem, but it’s pretty dumb.

Luckily, the game is still in open beta, so hopefully this will all be fixed before too long? The devs are pretty responsive – one of them posts in the thread on Something Awful, and he’s open about what they see as problems & plan to fix.

“How many hours before I unlocked one mech that I could actually customize?” – between one and three. 25 matches to get first assault if I’m not mistaken. That’s by far easier then getting new body in Hawken.

It used to be a lot, lot worse before the patch I mention above. I expect it turned a lot of people away with that first impression, and I expect the patch was kind of slamming a “OH CRAP” button at this.

Yeah none of us really understood the EMP buff (it used to be about 4 seconds, and it was pretty controversial THEN) but Adhesive said they’re “reworking” it, so hopefully it gets properly balanced and we can stop banning it in tournaments and scrims
As I mentioned earlier though, Matchmaking is getting fixed and quite a few of us have run out of things to spend cash on. I can understand the frustration as far as earning your first bits and pieces goes (and certainly, there’s a few things that the game could do to ease newbies into the HC-earning flow), but we’ve had a lot of double HC weekends and after you get maybe 3 mechs you’ve probably covered all of the bases you want to cover barring metagame changes and brand new mechs (and they plan to release one a month, at least for the next year or so)
There are also promo events that give you several thousand HC (like the one right now on comixology regarding the second issue of the Hawken comic)
I mean… after buying a good chunk of the mechs in the game on a whim, I maybe play Infil and the CR-T, with my Brawler sitting there waiting for the more recent C mech speed nerf to get lifted a little

I’m not reading 670+ comments to see if anyone said this in relation to the controversial videogame violence article but I’m finding that any game that has killing as the major/core gameplay mechanic is less and less able to hold my attention for very long (Hotline Miami – uninstalled after less than three hours play). Deathmatch can be fun, yes, but after 20 odd years of it, expressed through innumerable variations, I find I have next to no interest in these giant-ish robots running about killing each other ad nauseum. I’d suggest this fact is also why Hawken’s dearth of alternate modes and maps is so significant; it needs variety to stave off the seen-it-all-before ennui.

Plus, Mechwarrior taught us that Giant Robots do not have the grace of ballet dancers doing parkour and who am I to argue with that venerable series?

You really didn’t miss anything worth reading, sad to say, except of course my own glorious ripping to shreds of a troll. I completely hear you – can’t say I’ve got much of an attention span for the vast majority of games – even generally very good games (according to everyone) aren’t staying on my hard drive long.

While I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people will love this game, I can’t help but to think that there is a more interesting game that could be made with robots than them shooting each other in an arena, no matter how well they implement the shooting and how tactical the game is and how pretty and well designed the arenas are.

Also, it was the first game I know of that did what everyone thinks Witcher 2 did first: One major decision completely changed the side you were fighting, and you’ve played a completely different set of levels. GOD and the music was HEAVENLY. Choirs of angels wrote that soundtrack.

That’s amazing! I hope you’ll enjoy it… I can remember the first steps being discouragingly difficult (even then) so it might take some getting used to. Years have been cruel to the graphics, which is why a remake would be so welcome.

Don’t worry – I still play lots of the old games. Having got to the second level (Avernus City?) I can honestly say it’s a blast to play! It is primitive but once you get used to it it hangs together very well. :)

I played it back in closed beta, it has some nice qualities to it and I like the graphics, however I don’t think it’s going to keep me playing it. It’s mostly small maps and not the large sprawling maps you used to in Mechwarrior. It’s fast paced, although not as fast paced as Tribes. If I were to choose between Tribes and Hawken, I’d choose Tribes. Tribes just has a nice balance, even if you just started that game you enjoy it and going fast is hella fun

The problem with these kinds of games is the idiotic matchmaking. It completely ruins solo players that just want to hop in and shoot some stuff. It also increases the hate for newbie because if you are gonna spend 30+ mins playing 5v5, 1 newbie is going to ruin the match for everyone else. There really need to be open servers were people can drop in/out as they please. This will allow a newbie to hop in a server mess around for a bit and leave without ruining the match for everyone else. Add free to play bullshit ontop of this just makes it so much worse. Forcing people to find 4 friends that can play whenever you want to play is just bad, stupid design.

That’s actually completely untrue. I LOVE matchmaking, and I can’t stand how the FPS genre refuses to advance past server browsers (or matchmaking that just dumps you into a server exactly like if you’d picked a random one off a list). If you want to hop in and shoot some dudes solo, then all power to you I guess, but I think you and I will never be caught playing the same games, or at least not the same modes. I play multiplayer games for the competition. My favorite is League of Legends right now, and the only reason it has held my attention for all of these years is the real sense of progression and accomplishment in the game. This has nothing to do with leveling up – I hit max level over a year ago, and have not gained anything else noteworthy during that time. I play mostly the same champions I always have, so it’s also not from unlocking new champions. The progression, for me, is all about improving at the game and having the game actually take notice of that. As I learn more about the game, I don’t just win more or get higher k/d ratios or anything like that – I get to play against other people that are just as good as I am. As I improve, so does my competition. Every game is serious, with everyone present wanting to work as a team to win the game. There is teamwork and strategy as 5 random people hop into a game and try to play like a real team, because they know that the only thing that matters at the end of the day is whether they win or lose as a team. That focus, the understanding between everyone that the only thing that matters is whether your screen says victory or defeat, is invigorating. It’s the experience I got from playing in a Tribes:Ascend tournament, training for weeks beforehand, but I can have it on demand anytime I want.

And before anyone says “but you should be playing for fun, not just to win,” please don’t. I’ve been hearing that argument since I was around 5, and it’s no more appealing 15 years later. The fun doesn’t come from winning, and losing doesn’t mean that I didn’t have fun. The fun comes from the competition. When everyone is so focused on a single goal, you get to test your limits in a way that isn’t possible without that kind of goal. And that, to me, is fun. Win or lose, I have fun, and winning is not more fun than losing; but if I take that and say “oh so I should just try to have fun and not care whether I win or lose” then I would lose everything that made the experience fun to begin with.

And why they are therefore *just as bad* as server browsers for people like me, while bringing none of the benefits of server browsers to people that like server communities. Good matchmaking is key, and it trumps server browsers by miles. Incidentally, FPSs are the only genre I know of where matchmaking is that shitty and server browsers are valued at all.

Balanced games. Every matchmade match should be highly balanced (if it isn’t that’s a problem with the implementation, and you should shout about the terrible implementation). That’s what matchmaking brings. I don’t like playing against players worse than me (often), I don’t like playing against players way better than me (again, at least not often). A server browser, at best (and I have never seen this implemented well), gives me the ability to select a server that claims to have players of a skill level close to what I believe my skill level to be. But it doesn’t prevent others who may be mistaken in their own estimate of their skill level or who may just like to play against people way better or worse than them from joining. And I may be mistaken in my estimate of my own skill level as well. And then, how do I know when I’m ready for the next tier of servers, or when I should drop to a lower tier?

An additional benefit that is not core to matchmaking but that is enabled by it is games that have a real beginning and ending. If the teams fluctuate throughout the match, and even the sides become imbalanced over time, then there’s no sense of consistency, of working as a team through the match, both the good and the bad. Most FPSs that I play, even ones with some form of (inevitably poor) matchmaking, feel like they are designed purely for 100% solo players who don’t care about having a team except that they can get their buddies to hop on sometimes. To me, that’s not what a multiplayer game is about – that’s a single player game with co-op. What I want in a team based multiplayer game are stories; stories of bitter defeat, of fighting tooth and nail to the last second, of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat and defeat from the jaws of victory. And most of all, every story I tell, I want them to mean something. Not to be one anecdote of a game made up of nothing else, but an anecdote that happens while I was doing everything in my power to win. When winning is your only goal, all the fun stuff just has so much more impact.

Weird, because there was a server browser in the last closed beta.
No, there wasnt. There were three closed beta events. The first two had a server browser; the last one didnt, specifically so Adhesive could improve matchmaking. It was stated that the server browser would return eventually, along with other goodies like private servers.

I suspect its currently missing because they redid the UI for Open Beta and havent yet ported over some of the functionality (like advanced graphics options).

The difference between Level 1 and Level 25 is not all that much, maybe a 15 – 20 percent boost at most. The major issue is experience. That, and playing a mech youre comfortable with. You need to understand how your mech is supposed to be played.
Yes, the game currently puts inexperienced players against experienced ones. Thats because the matchmaking currently isnt based on any sort of skill, but on the amount of mechs and levels you have on them in your garage. There are plans to change how matchmaking works.

Developers want to offer some progression and rewards for playing. F2P you get better stuff and upgrades. CoD, BF3 you get access to different guns, some arguably better along with vehicle upgrades. You reward the experienced people with more powerful items, instead of similar but same power items. Rookies already have the disadvantage of being new. Now they face against experience plus someone who has a auto 20% boost to power.

MWO upgrades seem more subtle still give the Vet with a mech 10 mil CBills invested into it (Endo, Double Heat Sinks, FF Armor, Modules) more power. I think the tutorial or something needs to inform rookies of this and remind them to play a more cautious game vs going guns blazing.

I played it. Its fun for an hour or two then it starts to get boring like a lot of deathmatch games these days. Its still a very pretty game though. Of course the F2P barrier is always annoying but I have always been a purist in the sense I hate this having to unlock shit in competitive games anyways and is always an immediate turn off for me. I still thought I would give it a fair shot though and its not bad just not that great either.

It’s still in beta for a reason. It’s free for a reason. Adhesive understand that your time and interest are the biggest resources they can tap into – and if they tap into them the right way, money will follow. Look at World of Tanks – it’s not even in its 1.0 version, and it has made loads of money and has a very vibrant and active community of tankers all over the world. It’s free to play, of course. It’s fun, because you love it when battles go right and you hate it when battles go wrong – and they very often do.

Hawken – it’s free, a beta, you can get in with almost no hassle (I wish I could say the same of Planetside 2, which keeps crashing after the latest update). If you play it and you like it – send feedback to the team. If you play it and you don’t like it – uninstall it, but please, do send feedback to the team. WoT and Hawken are good examples of two games that have been getting progressively better because the talent of the developers has been coupled with the passion of the community.

I haven’t played it yet. But I don’t like the dodging. It just doesn’t fit in, imho. I like the more agile Mechs (in comparison to Mechwarrior), but many tons of metal don’t just get accelerated in a split second like that. Feels wrong…
But I’ll try it anyway.

I wouldn’t have minded being stuck with an awful mech and weapons if it weren’t for the abysmal matchmaking. On my very first match I saw players ranging from my level to the upper 20s. I didn’t leave the game installed much longer than that.

Finally got into it after they fixed the account creation cock-up that kept people out of the closed beta.

Played a single game. Came middle in the scoreboard, to just pre-empt the usual “you just don’t like it because you suck”. Was bored before the fifteen minute round was up. Uninstalled once it was over.

It flows like an iffy UT2003 mod (you feel more like an unresponsive human than a vehicle), the mech you get is a microwave on legs, and from that brief glimpse it looked like permanent experience grind or paying money (I really don’t care which—both are curses on multiplayer games) unlocked actually more capable weapons, like some kind of EMP grenade. They give you jetpack-like abilities, then put invisible walls all over the map—but inconsistently. There is no indication if you can get over a building or mountain ridge that you have enough fuel for until you smack into the big clipping barrier that might be there.

It is kind of pretty, despite how dorky the mech looks, and it is sort of readable despite all the grey/brown and dust, if only for the HUD markers. But it’s just no fun.

I’m having a blast playing it. It’s fast, different than your average everyday shooter, quick and easy to jump into and grab a short match. I’m a sucker for shooters that put a lot of emphasis on movement trying to do something different yet keep it simple enough, similar to the likes of Quake, Tribes and UT. I’m also a person that likes my games focused on fun over realism. Hawken takes these to the max and still looks pretty. Dueling players that know when to dodge, don’t waste all their fuel sprinting around, avoid sitting around in the open to get EMP’d, and using cover very well is absolutely challenging and fun. I think Hawken is coming along.

Be it Mechs or Jet Packs or giant continents locked in perpetual war…one simple question remains:

Do we really need yet another multi-player only, death match oriented, FPS?

I don’t mean to troll, and I realize that perhaps there is some small different between Hawken, Tribes, PS2 and the plethora of other MP FPS games on the market. Mechs maybe feel a little different than a soldier on his feet. PS2 offers vehicle unlocks. Beyond these differences – which are only cosmetic and in some cases about variations in how the game “feels” these are each and every one the same game.

And really…to say the market i saturated with MP FPS games that feature extensive, boring grinds, poor match making, unbalanced game play and repetitive and pointless death match game play is a massive understatement. If I want FPS action right now I am going to delve into a deep, single player game like Far Cry 3 or STALKER Complete. Or maybe some PS2, since at least the war is persistent.

Like someone else said…I just cannot get excited about yet another MP only FPS with grinding for unlocks and unbalanced play. How about we make a single player, campaign or sandbox Mech game – maybe with coop? That I could get behind.

What’s worse though is the look speed is capped at a really low speed. At least in MWO you can aim separately from where you’re looking with most guns, but hawken is verry aggravating to play with a limited turn speed. People play PC shooters because they don’t like how joy sticks do that.

Hmmm, thanks but no thanks. I’ll stick with MechWarrior. Both games have their flaws, both are still beta, but I love MechWarrior in spite of it’s flaws. I just don’t like COD with mech skin on, MechWarrior feels and plays like a mech simulator.

Honestly, I’m getting kind of tired of people calling it “COD with a mech skin”. It’s not even CLOSE to Call of Duty in actual play.

For one, there’s no locational damage. Two, TTK is MUCH, MUCH longer (5+ seconds as opposed to the 1 second or less of CoD). Three, there’s the dodging and boosting. Four, everyone has a powerful secondary weapon.

It is definitely a shooter. But it is not even a relative of Call of Duty or any of the modern military manshooters, and to insinuate such is completely disingenuous. At most you could say it is a close cousin of the arena-style shooters like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament with a longer TTK.

Haven’t played as of the last two closed betas (they wanted me to redownload every time a new beta came out, and at 6gb, not happening with a bandwidth cap…) but there was for sure a server browser when I was playing. Also surprised to hear that Sharpshooter isn’t much good- the sheer power of its weapons meant it was pretty brutal even at close range before.

I personally love the game. The visuals; the feel of being a big, stompy, yet agile robot; the excellent graphics; the sound effects; the actual mech designs… yeah, it’s pretty good to me.

Even so, it definitely has its warts. TBH the prices and progression speed aren’t really all that bad aside from item prices (which are insane considering you have to buy items separately for every mech). The matchmaking definitely needs work (as in needs to work at all), and it’s one reason I play FFA DM almost exclusively. There are definite balance issues in the game (Hellfires are completely useless against skilled players, EMPs are waaaay too powerful, the TOW does too much damage for how easy it is to hit with). We need a LOT more maps, mechs, and weapons in general (but of course, they’re coming).

But even in its current state, it’s the one multiplayer shooter that actually has me coming back to it time and again. Not Team Fortress 2, nor Battlefield 3, nor Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, nor Counter-Strike could hold my attention like Hawken does. There’s just something about it…

One day, someone will make the mech game I’ve been dreaming about since I was a mecha-obsessed kid. Steel Batallion was the closest to the fantasy, but nine-tenths of that was the gloriously unwieldy controller. It got the heaviness of mechs right. This article makes it sound like Adhesive got another aspect of the fantasy right; the feel of zipping around in a light mech, tumbling about a crumbling city like a stompy dancer as you deal death to other hulking ballerinas.

As such, I will play it. And then I will be disappointed by the game around it, as I always am.

A game about envy, like the rest of the F2P envy contests out there.
Oh, you don’t like being stomped on by players with better gear? Give us money, so you tomorrow can stomp on other poor beginners just like yourself are now.
Seriously, FUCK* YOU.
For that matter, fuck Mechwarrior Online, World Of Tanks, and aaaaall the other basically good games FUBARed by it’s creators.
Try mechlivinglegends, it’s a Crysis Wars mod still unaffected by this FUCK*.
And please, spare me “in Hakwen you can’t buy better gear”, I’ve seen teams with bought heavy and long range mechs basically spawnraping the living shit out of the last gamemode with the two spaceships.

* This word is used in a context in which I am in anger about good games being FUCKed with. If it were not sad, I woudn’t use this word and would politely omit commenting at all, because I wouldn’t give a SHIT.

And, rockpapershotgun, thanks for being so awesome and not trying to implement some language filter, it is really awesome being able to properly express oneself.

Well you are getting the game for free, albeit neutered. How do you expect them to keep the servers running and the staff paid without any income? I mean, it’s either F2P micro-tansactions, or monthly subscriptions.

I have been playing MWO strictly for free, haven’t put a single dime in it yet, and no one has any advantages over me just because they pay.

I would expect to give them 40 Euros like a decade ago and being able fully play it instead of having to pay like 500 Euros for that and STILL not being sure how far they twist the item spiral tomorrow.

My condolences for you grinding your way up in MWO from a light mech or the stock ones to the time you could afford a heavy one customized to your needs. I gave up after 3 days. I wish you a happy beginner-bashing in the assault mode! Oh, maybe you take the red pill once.

Well if you’re merely playing for the grind, then of course you won’t enjoy it. I play it for the fun of it, the fun of playing MechWarrior again. It took me two days to get a hunchback and customize it and after that it was smooth sailing. Plus if you login now, you automatically get a free 7,000,000 C bills which would get you an assault mech fully customizable, and they also did away with the rearm and repair costs.

But again, if you are going to play just for grinding and completing a mech tree, then it won’t be enjoyable.

I can actually relate, as it was my experience in World of Tanks, which was nothing more than a grind fest, I found myself merely playing to get the next tank, not to have fun. In the end I gave up on it, after I started losing money with the Tiger tanks, even when I win and have kills.

The heavy mechs were bitterly underpowered during the closed betas, nice to see they have some teeth now, although the bunker-down mode is still garbage, excellent way to take several TOWs to the face and not be able to evade.

In Hawken, you absolutely can buy better gear, there’s no getting around it. But from what I’ve seen so far, the TOW and AR/SMC have been more than enough to get me through Scout encounters, Infiltrator encounters, etc, so I haven’t really found it too obnoxious. Part of it, I think, is from playing the closed beta, where they handed out enough Meteor Cash to buy a couple of mechs off the bat, so you could discover for yourself how they were far from overpowered. I really think they ought to do that again, just give everybody a starter bundle for their first cash purchase or something, it’d be a lot nicer of a way to handle the F2P thing.

Not sure why people keep suggesting that the OB “heavy” mechs are more powerful in Open Beta
C Mechs were actually better in the CB tests. They slowed them down in OB without any equivalent buff
They were pretty close to being OP in CB2, and they had to increase the speed gap for CB3 to avoid instances in which C mechs could both fight and chase well
The primary issue with C mechs is that they’re a little bit harder to learn than A’s, because despite the huge health pool you have, there’s much less room for error. Getting caught out of position can cause you to very quickly lose your health bonus and basically just be a really big and slow A mech

Normally I hate multiplayer online games (primarily because I suck royally at them, a side-effect of getting old), but I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing Hawken the past 2 weeks and it’s probably the first F2P game I actually spent some money on (for a new Mech).

The game mechanics are fun: mech mobility, cover use, dodging. And it has an actual numeric health gauge (wow). I’m old.

The game has potential, but they need to look at their F2P model (at least share XP between mechs), provide more maps and game modes, provide some sort of bot mode where you can get used to your mech and tweak stuff, and they should certainly tweak the matchmaking algorithm used.

When done correctly, as in Tribes Ascend (IMO), you play the game and enjoy it, spend 15 bucks on customization for your playstyle, and then you have a good solid little multiplayer game you can play. 15 moneys is not a lot of money for a game that is already fun to begin with.

The problem is when the game isn’t fun out of the box. MWO made me really sad to play. I’m not a big fan of MW to begin with (better in theory than practise, heat management is dull, none of the weapons feel impactful, walking tanks turn into a game of circle strafing bumpercarts) but there is basically nothing to MWO when you first get into it.

I don’t know what the secret is other than to ensure your fundamentals are really bloody good, because what F2P is before you pay is a demo. The demo should show you awesomeness and entice you to invest. It shouldn’t torment you with weakness and poke you with a dollar-sign-shaped stick every minute to make sure you remember that you’d be a fool not to pay.

I haven’t played Hawken yet but from what I gather from comments and previews, it seems like they are fucking up F2P just like everybody else.

Personally I was turned off by the brown-and-brown environments and the lack of sound. A deafening sound inside a mech totally makes sense, but if you go overboard like this the guns sound like peashooters and there’s not even an announcer in place to break the silence inbetween taking potshots at each other and repairing yourself. It doesn’t even get tense in the cockpit as you take more and more damage or something.

Those two things combined with the standard television mechs everywhere (that remind me of PLEASE CHANGE ME default avatars) and the really high playing times required to rack up points for weapons just filled me with a dull, bleak, worn-out feeling. So lifeless somehow.

Jetpack’ing around and dodging around was fun tho. Unless they fix all the other things tho, I’ll stick to my other games.